She sighed. ‘You know, I sincerely wish he was alive. I wish I had been able to persuade him to leave the bunker and come with me, but he wouldn’t leave.’

‘Then tell us every detail of your trip and your meetings with him. That last flight out of Berlin.’

‘Of course.’ A smile lit up her face. Her large eyes sparkled. ‘I like nothing better than to talk about flying. So, I was with General Robert Ritter von Greim . . .’

‘Your lover?’ Heck asked.

She laughed. ‘So people say, but I would never talk about such things, even if they were true. But it is no secret that Robert and I were close. Anyway, in the final days of the war, Goering was dismissed as head of the Luftwaffe and Ritter von Greim was promoted in his place. Not that there was much left of the Luftwaffe to command, you understand. The Führer wanted to see him to give him his orders, but Robert was in Munich. The question was how to get into Berlin when it was almost completely overrun by the Red Army? All we had left was a few hundred metres around the Führerbunker and the Chancellery.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Well, Robert was undeterred. He would have been within his rights to say such a journey was impossible but he was utterly loyal to Hitler and I was loyal to both of them. Together, Ritter von Greim and I flew from Munich to the large airbase at Rechlin, north of Berlin. We commandeered a Focke-Wulf and flew on to Gatow on the western outskirts of Berlin.’

‘But you were flying through enemy airspace – surely you were attacked?’

‘Of course, but we had a fighter escort, forty strong. We were damaged but lucky because we managed to land safely. Many of the brave fighter pilots who escorted us were not so fortunate.’

‘All for the vanity of one man.’

She gave him a death stare, then moved on with her tale. ‘With the Focke-Wulf out of commission, we transferred to a Fieseler Storch for the last leg into the city centre.’

‘Wasn’t that suicidal?’

‘It was war. You are a soldier, Lieutenant. Soldiers put their lives on the line and never question an order.’

‘Carry on.’